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Contradictions/Indecision: a Treatise to Dispel Myths about the Creative Act

San Francisco Festival
De Fabriek

Eindhoven, Netherlands
1992

This temporary installation/performance was created for an alternative space in a former factory in Holland. Moving play structures made acoustic sounds resembling industrial machinery, when activated by performers and audience members, to comprise a treatise comparing art with industry and play with work.

Wood, fabric, water, plexiglas, file folders, documents, gravel and wire cable.

Dimensions: 12′ H x 45′ W x 45′ L

Installation overview with teeter-totter, see saw, water, and trough, red file folders
Double see saw inside a round curtained space hung with translucent fabric for walls
Double see saw. The box contains water and pennies that sloshed when active.
4 performers rock the double see saw as seen from outside the translucent curtained space
Audience members try out the double see saw after the performance.
Judith demonstrates swing over long trough of water
Demonstrating the swing over a long trough of water.
Judith on swing splashing the water in a very long trough.
Getting a splash is harder than it looks.
Teeter totter.
Two teeter totters each have a box in the middle with a plexiglas window on top, filled with gravel that creates sound when activated.
Two performers on the teeter totter moving wildly up and down.
Enthusiastic performers on one of two teeter totters.
Twelve rows of 3 hanging file folders descend diagonally from the wall with cables.
Rows of file folders contained documentation and paperwork generated in the course of producing this piece. Text written on the walls in Dutch and English chant the “myths about the creative act,” as a means of purging them from my mental chatterbox.

Also see news articles

Rene von Peer, Eindhovens Dagblad, “San Francsico Festival, Intimate and Intense” – May 11, 1992. Review.

Rene von Peer, Eindhovens Dagblad, “From Performance to Giant Robots” – May 5, 1992. Preview.